HIGH COURT ORDERS CRIMINAL PROSECUTION AGAINST BMC COMMISSIONER

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Even as we have exposed how the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) has been torturing Bhubaneswar in these pages on the 7th January and on several earlier days, the High Court of Orissa has passed an Order yesterday directing the State Pollution Control Board (PCB) to file a Criminal case against the BMC Commissioner and report compliance on the 11th February.

This means, the lady IAS officer Aparajita Sarangi will face criminal prosecution within a fortnight for her criminal negligence to the health of the city.

The only work that a Municipal Body is meant to perform is management of urban waste.

BMC has utterly failed in this.

The lady IAS officer is marked for her burning zeal in demolition of the basic sources of livelihood of the local venders; but the local Press and politicians are yet to find out if the drive is tuned with concealed advantage for kiosk makers.

As we have exposed, the Commissioner has sloughed over the Supreme Court of India orders in the matter of saving Bhubaneswar from the horrific hazards afflicted upon its environment by herds of milkmen who, about 4000 in numbers, have encroached upon all lucrative locations in Bhubaneswar. The Municipal Corporation Act 2003 has put a blatant ban on keeping of cows and buffaloes etc in and around the BMC area against which the milkmen preferred their final appeal before the Apex court and the judgment passed in 2006 has rejected their appeal while making it mandatory for the BMC to oust the milkmen immediately without any compensation and/ or rehabilitation package.

Thus, though strengthened by the Supreme Court verdict, the BMC was to demolish forthwith all the cowsheds and oust all the milkmen from its limits, it has never caused that to happen.

It is inferred that this colossal failure to implement its own Law has a backhander factor behind it; the suspected volume touching the border of one crores of Rupees per month.

In the cirumstances, it is significant that the braggart pretense of development of Bhubaneswar has failed to hoodwink the High Court.

One may now hope that the Commissioner subjected to criminal prosecution for crafty deception in waste management, the BMC will rise to oust the cowherds from the city and to save its air and environment from stench and cow dung.

The lady Commissioner should be prosecuted against by name as otherwise the responsibility for wrecking havoc on inhabitants’ lives cannot be punished.